Mastering Houdini Muscles: A Studio Level VFX Workflow [CGCircuit, Noah Schnapp]
- Publisher
- CGCircuit
- Product Type
- Video Course
- Product URL
- https://www.cgcircuit.com/tutorial/mastering-houdini-muscles-a-studio-level-vfx-workflow
- Author
- Noah Schnapp
- Language
- English, English Subtitles
- Duration
- 33:33
- Release date
- Sep 13, 2024
- Skill level
- Project Files
- Yes
- Product Price
- $975
Simulating Muscles in Visual Effects has been a long, expensive, and frustrating process. THIS CHANGES NOW.
Course Breakdown
- Course Introduction: 30 minutes
- Intro to Simple Muscles in Houdini: 3 Hours 40 Minutes
- Reconform Muscles Easily To Characters: 3 Hours 31 Minutes
- Intro To Complex Muscles in Houdini: 1 Hour
- Automatic Preroll Generation for CFX: 8 Hours
- Studio Level Pipeline and Simulation: 15 Hours 30 Minutes
In this training series, you'll learn the secrets behind advanced visual effects muscle simulation. Unlike other training series that focus on slow, high-resolution asset generation, we will use simpler meshes for faster iteration. You'll learn how to efficiently reconform muscles to any character and how to procedurally solve intersections so a human artist doesn't have to manually touch things up.
We'll cover simple and complex muscle examples, a variety of resources, and discuss real-world physics, properties, and how certain values affect behavior. We'll set up an efficient, reusable pipeline including large networks with multiple file checkpoints so you can easily jump in at any point along the way. This will enable you to create a baseline character where you can adjust attributes that can be inherited to all of your future characters, getting you up and running in a fraction of the time.
We'll explore the advantages and situations where we can leverage Franken-muscles and multi-muscle setups, and create a switch to easily blend between them. We'll also learn how to use only our asset to procedurally generate tissue and skin volumes and efficient ways to store data so we can easily change topology or point count order at any time.
The next section is all about tuning muscle behavior: how to flex, inflate, and jiggle exactly as desired. We'll discuss how to procedurally create masks to blend our simulation back onto only certain parts of our character.
One of the most valuable chapters in this training series is about automatic preroll generation. For years, this has been a manual human process. We'll learn how to procedurally generate and adjust this with simple sliders. We'll also learn how to retarget animation from differently proportioned characters to any asset and how to start our simulation from any part of the animation using the automatically computed best rest pose, ramp up, and pre-animation momentum. This means if you have a shot that is 2000 frames long, you can now start at any point and choose where and how to blend in your simulation throughout the whole shot. We'll also discuss neutralizing and restoring locomotion to fix super-hero-like movement that moves too far and too fast over the course of our timeline. The best part is this network can be used for cloth, hair, or any character effects needs.
While this training series primarily focuses on muscle simulation, we'll also cover foundational Houdini knowledge and concepts useful to everyone. This includes an introduction to programming and tooling in Houdini, covering Python, Vex, VOPs, HScript, and UI design. We'll then dive into topics that bring this workflow from independent artist to studio level, including SubNets, automated TOP networks, file caching, wedging, and logging with user notifications.
Next, we'll look at optimizing our simulation speed by integrating Deadline Renderfarm submission and support to take advantage of all the computing power at our fingertips. We'll also look at solutions to possible problems, pitfalls, and errors so you don't have to waste time solving them yourself.
At the end of this training series, you'll be able to simulate any animation from any part of the animation with the click of a button. No more messy, manual setups, no more frustration, and no plugins required. We'll create all this just with Houdini.
My name is Noah Schnapp, and I've written and optimized multiple studio pipelines. I'm happy to share the industry secrets I've developed and perfected over the years. This is Mastering Houdini Muscles: A Studio Level VFX Workflow . This course is for intermediate to advanced VFX artists and studios looking to take their character effects simulation pipeline to the next level, supporting even the most challenging shots of today's VFX.
Let's jump in and get our flex on with over 33 hours of video material in this training course.
If you or someone you know is interested in learning the amazing world of Houdini muscle simulation or other character FX, please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, and I'll be happy to respond to your questions and comments!
